Page 6 - 2023 Taiwan Food and Drug Administration Annual Report

2023
Foreword
by the
Director-General

Taiwan Food and Drug Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare (TFDA), for the sake of
protecting people’s health and creating a safe living environment, with “Safe and effective medicinal
products, safe and healthy food” as its mission, manages the quality and safety of food, medicinal products,
medical devices and cosmetics that people are exposed to on a daily basis and continues to promote
various important policies, laws and regulations and advance in food and drug safety reforms, solutions
and measures while fulfilling its crucial mission to defend and protect national health. In order to document
relevant important policies, achievements, and performance, TFDA prepares annual reports summarizing
various important policies, plans and implementation achievements of the previous year and publishes
them domestically and internationally for reference.

In 2022, people’s lives were still affected by COVID-19. TFDA accelerates support for the industry to
quickly devote themselves to the fight against the pandemic. Besides the reduced time required to prepare
and produce standard products and real-time preparation and production of viral nucleic acid standards
for mainstream strain, auditing of commercially available self-test kits took place; applicable regulations
governing random border inspections of medical devices were amended; random border inspections were
increased; and test methods were prepared and made known to the public. All were meant to protect the
efficacy of in-vitro diagnostic test kits used by our people and to boost individuals’ capability of protecting
themselves against the pandemic throughout the nation.

As far as food safety management is concerned, in order to ensure control over the process from
production to distribution of food and to identify potential risk items, TFDA worked with other ministries
and departments and the prosecution, police, and investigation authorities, to reinforce food auditing and
other multiple supervisory mechanisms, adjusted the inspection methods and items on a rolling basis
reflective of domestic and international information, boosted the production random inspection rate and
advanced in subsequent label management; all are meant to protect the rights of consumers. Meanwhile,
smart technologies such as big data analysis have been applied to help with risk management. Cross-
checking, comparison, contrast and analysis of linked cloud food data are applied to keeping track of
potentially risky businesses. Meanwhile, applicable laws and regulations are proactively revised and food